1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to data processing and, in particular, to printing documents. Still more particularly, the present invention provides a method, apparatus, and program to prevent computer recognition of data in printed documents.
2. Description of Related Art
A company may invest time and effort into producing a document that holds a value. For example, the document may include information that may be sold or the document may include secret information. However, once the document is printed, the information may be easily stolen and distributed by transforming the document into an electronic format. This may be done by scanning the document into a computer. Once the document is scanned into an image format, the computer may perform optical character recognition (OCR) on the scanned image.
OCR uses known fonts to identify characters in an image. OCR software has internal representations of the images, such as bitmaps, of each character in known fonts and compares them against the scanned document. The OCR software may then produce a text representation, such as American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII).
The prior art has focused on techniques for preventing reproduction of documents using copy machines and facsimile machines. However, OCR remains as a possible method for unauthorized reproduction of a printed document. Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide a method, apparatus, and program to prevent computer recognition of data in printed documents.